John Waters doesn’t just embrace contradiction — he lives in it. A filmmaker, writer, visual artist and cultural icon, Waters has spent over half a century gleefully blurring the lines between art and filth, good taste and bad, high camp and low culture. Dubbed the “Pope of Trash” by influential Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs, he’s an unapologetic visionary who now aligns himself with what he calls “the extreme middle,” a provocateur who mocks liberals as often as conservatives, and a queer icon who tells me he never quite felt at home in gay bars.
Raised Catholic in 1950s Baltimore — the city that became his cinematic muse — Waters, now 79, began making 8mm films in his teens, later forming a troupe of outsider collaborators known as the Dreamlanders, including the legendary Divine, whose filthy glamour helped reshape drag forever. His early transgressive films like “Pink Flamingos” and “Female Trouble” scandalized audiences and were banned in multiple countries, but over time his work gained cult status — eventually breaking into the mainstream with “Hairspray,” which went from midnight movie to Broadway hit.
Waters, now 79, has built a career on going too far — on purpose — and somehow always landing with his audience exactly where he wants them: laughing, uncomfortable, maybe even reconsidering what they believe.
When I spoke with Waters, we covered everything from the evolution of drag and “bonus holes” to fake banned books and the politics of humor. He also reflects on what rebellion looks like now, what it meant then and why humor might be our last defense.
Let’s start with the obvious: What does the name of your current tour, “Going to Extremes,” mean for you in 2025?
I rewrite my show that I do once a year. It’s a 70-minute stand-up show about everything. This is the newer version of that, and so it’s all new material. It’s a brand-new spoken-word show where I talk about everything: politics, fashion, crime, the new sexual revolution, everything. But it’s going to extremes. I think I’ve always done that, but it seems like we’re in such an extreme time now that I’m going to go even further with humor, hopefully.
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When I hear “extreme” now, it’s almost impossible not to think “extremists.”
Well, I’ve always been an extremist, but I’m more of a joyous one than the kind of extremists we have on either side of the political chart these days.
I’ve heard you even call yourself part of a “joyous rebellion,” which seems true when I think back to your catalog of films. There’s certainly a rebellious nature to those films, but there’s also lots of silly joy in them. Why “joyous rebellion”?
Well, because I make fun of the rules that rebels live by, not our parents that we rebelled from. And so I basically make fun of things I like, and I always said: That’s why I’ve been able to do it for half a century and get away with it. And I make fun of gay rules just as much. My audience is even straight people that can’t get along with other straight people, and gay people that don’t always fit within the gay world. I’m sometimes one of them. I was one of the first ones in a gay bar when I was young thinking, “I might be queer, but I’m not this.”
Have you always felt like a misfit in a misfit community?
Yes, in all communities, but that did not bring me sadness. It gave me a new sense of humor and it gave me a different perspective. It wasn’t a bad thing, but I recognized it.
You’ve pushed boundaries since before it was trendy to push boundaries. In a time when everyone’s outraged about something and when so much is shocking, is it actually harder to shock people now?
I don’t try to just shock; that’s easy. I try to shock you sometimes, but through laughter that makes you change your mind — that is much harder than just shocking somebody. Just being shocking isn’t that funny. I could pick up a couple stupid shocking things to say, but if they’re stupid, it’s not funny.
I spoke with comedian and drag legend Murray Hill recently. We talked about the disarming nature of humor and how it can be a tool to reach across the aisle.
Definitely. Humor is terrorism — which I think is important, when you embarrass the enemy. The hardest thing? The enemy of many of us is not embarrassed easily. [Laughs.]
Looking back at your career, can you think of a moment when you felt like everything changed for you — either because your work reached a new audience, crossed boundaries or just landed in a way that shifted things professionally?
The night that “Pink Flamingos” finally opened at midnight in New York after it’d been playing other places for two years, and after it opened, the next week I went back and there was a line around the block. My life also changed the night that “Hairspray” opened on Broadway, and when one of my books got a great review in The New York Times. It was on the bestseller list. Those are the three times my life changed the most professionally. Personally, none of your business. [Laughs.]
When do you feel like your comedy reached across the aisle?
It always did. With “Multiple Maniacs,” we made fun of hippies, even though my audience was hippies. I make fun of political correctness; my audience is politically correct sometimes. I make fun of the liberals. I’m a complete liberal, but I make fun of liberals. I make fun of the genres of every movie I’ve ever made. I mean, “Multiple Maniacs” was a gore movie. “Pink Flamingos” was kind of an underground movie. “Female Trouble” was a biopic. “Desperate Living” was a medical movie. “Polyester” was a gimmick movie. “Hairspray” was a dance movie. “Cry-Baby” was a musical. “Serial Mom” was true crime. “Pecker” was a family movie and “A Dirty Shame” was sexploitation and “Cecil B. Demented” was political.
Do you know of any radical Republicans who love “Pink Flamingos”?
Yes.
Tell me more.
No, because definitely I do know Republicans who like my work. I just don’t talk about politics with them. I’m friendly with some. But I don’t think being Republican makes you… Trump said two funny things in his life when he was in the debate. And no one ever mentioned this when he said to Harris, “Biden hates you.” That, to me, was funny.
Is there inspiration in all of this for some future work for you?
Everything inspires me. Everything I get is for future work. I get six newspapers delivered every morning and I read about eight others online. Everything that happens is fodder for me.
We’re living in a world where extremes are everywhere — on the left, on the right, online, offline.
For the first time ever, I’m in the extreme middle. That is what I am right now. That’s how I identify.
What extremes do you think we’re not paying enough attention to right now?
Well, the extremes of humor are always important, and I think both extreme sides never have a sense of humor about themselves, because they’re on a pedestal preaching to people, which is the way to make people vote for the opposite of what you’re saying. And I think, in a way, that’s what happened in the last election. We made the audience feel stupid. We don’t know how to pick our battles, and picking our battles is something that’s very, very important. You do the extreme things after you win, not before.
You’ve been making queer political art for so long.
Queer was a very hurtful word when I was growing up.
Have you come around to the word?
I don’t use it much. I’m not against it, but I don’t use it much. I have it in “Hairspray,” when Penny says, “He’s such a queer.” That just meant a nerd too. It wasn’t a gay thing. But being called a queer was very hurtful, yeah. And it’s the same like all bad words: You take it back. I like “ribbon clerk” — an anti-gay term that I find quite endearing. “There’s that little ribbon clerk.” It’s British. It means a snotty little queen that works in the gift wrap department at Harrods. There are some horrible things to say about people, but I don’t think anybody’s been convicted of a hate crime by calling somebody a ribbon clerk.
We have a new generation of LGBTQ+ artists pushing back right now on everything from transphobia to censorship, and for decades, of course, you’ve done this in your own way artistically. How does what’s happening right now feel familiar to you? Or does this generation’s version of queer rebellion look totally different from what you were doing in the ’70s in Baltimore?
“We’re here, we’re not queer, and nobody’s used to it.” That’s really what it is now, because the young kids, they aren’t just queer. They’re open to everything. You don’t know what you’re going to get, and they call it a “bonus hole,” whatever you get when you take somebody’s clothes off. That was a new one to me. It startled me. Then the next year at the camp [Camp John Waters is an adults-only summer camp hosted by Waters in Kent, Connecticut], we sold “bonus hole” badges and it was the first thing we sold out of.
These new extremes do surprise me even, but I think that’s very healthy. I am a survivor of the first sexual revolution, but there’s definitely a new one that is going on and the trans thing was, except recently, accepted by young people really quickly. “Gay” took centuries. But right now, every trans person’s a murderer. That’s what they’re trying to say now. Gays Against Guns, that organization, I love. Then I saw somebody that had on a T-shirt that said Give Queers Guns, which did make me laugh. I thought, “Well, that’s a new one. I haven’t seen that one before.”
What’s your advice to young weirdos and LGBTQ+ artists today who want to push boundaries but maybe are afraid of getting dragged — or worse, doxed?
Well, I think they’re going to drop a net on all of us. That’s what I say in the press release. They’re coming to take us away. I say, we resist with a limp wrist fist. That’s what I made them chant in my last show: “Resist with a limp wrist fist.”
What do you remember from the early days of your own rebellion on anti-gay rhetoric?
First thing I wanted to be was a beatnik. Beatniks were gay probably because of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Then I wanted to be a hippie and there were gay hippies, and I went to the first gay marches and everything, and so there was always the punks. I love gay punks still. They were downlow a lot, but so there were always gays. In whatever the rebellion movement was, there were gay hippies, like The Cockettes. I mean, bohemia is what I liked. I don’t care what you do in bed.
Does the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric now feel different than it did when you were experiencing it for the first time?
Well, people aren’t questioning it. To me, Trump’s never going to get rid of drag. And I hear Republicans saying to their trans children, “Can’t you just be gay?”
So it’s a whole new thing. But Trump, I don’t know. He’ll never get rid of gay marriage. I don’t believe that. Too many people have done it. It’s not going to go back. I could be wrong. And drag… RuPaul deserves great credit for making drag completely mainstream. I mean that as a compliment. When I was young, Milton Berle was in drag; that was the first drag queen I ever saw. So I think you’re not going to get rid of drag or gay marriage. But we got to resist with a limp wrist fist if we do. Also, I never understood why gay people want to get married. Haven’t they heard of gay alimony?
You’ve never been interested in getting married then?
I’m not, but other people certainly should be allowed to. I hated all weddings I’ve ever been to no matter who’s getting married. I don’t like the ritual of it.
What do you think Divine, who you worked with in many of your films, would think of these TikTok drag queens and the fact that drag is now such a political battleground?
I think Divine would be thrilled [by them]. Divine changed drag. You can see his influence on every drag queen that’s popular today. When I was young, drag queens were square. They wanted to be Miss America. Now every drag queen has an edge, and I think Divine has a lot to do with that.
Do you see any kind of connection between today’s drag and book bans and the way that your work used to be treated as “filthy”?
Well, I don’t want to give away a lot, but basically I want to make up fake books and sneak them in the library with titles that’ll really make them go crazy.
Are you going to share these titles at the show?
Oh yeah, I am.
What’s a recent pop culture moment that made you think, “That’s so disgusting and I love it”?
Well, there’s so many of them. I wouldn’t want to give it credit. I think there’s so many disgusting things in pop culture. I would say the top would be Kimberly Guilfoyle. And so I could never be Gavin Newsom. He was married to her, wasn’t he? And Trump’s son. She, to me, would be the most frightening of all.
So disgusting and you love it?
I didn’t say disgusting, you did.
But that was my question.
Performatory! No, her art — when she gave political speeches, it was a new kind of horror for me to watch. Let’s put it that way.
What’s one thing you’ll never stop defending no matter how unpopular it gets?
The “Final Destination” movies. I love every one of them.
The most recent one was pretty damn good, right?
It was the best one. I was supposed to be in it. I was supposed to play the guy in the elevator that got blown up. But when they shot, it was Covid and I couldn’t do it.
Do you ever stop and look back and think, “I can’t believe that I got away with all of this”?
Well, I do when “Pink Flamingos” is playing on Turner Classics. How could that possibly happen?
